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Sonnets From the Bosnian

By Dwight Garner November 15, 2007 12:08 pmNovember 15, 2007 12:08 pm

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese” gets its title, of course, from the fact that Robert Browning’s pet name for her was Portuguese, and because they wanted to disguise these intimate poems as translations.

It’s less well-known – I’d forgotten it, at any rate – that the book was almost titled “Sonnets From the Bosnian.”

The British writer and critic Gary Dexter reminds us of this story in his engaging and, well, dexterous new book “Why Not Catch-21?: The Stories Behind the Titles.”

Dexter describes how Robert Browning knocked down Elizabeth’s idea to call it “Sonnets From the Bosnian” and observes:

Without Browning’s intervention, then, ‘Bosnian’ would have been irrevocably associated in English-speaking countries with the muse of love … Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s surviving masterpiece would have had a title rather bolder, rather funnier and rather more outrageously deceitful than the one it finally got. Perhaps Robert should have kept quiet.

One other title-related close call Dexter describes is “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1934). James M. Cain’s original title for the book, he writes, was “Bar-B-Q.”